Document Destruction – Why is it important for your business?

No matter what type of business you may be running, chances are that you have confidential information. If you have confidential information in any documents whatsoever, then document destruction simply must be something that you prioritize at all times. As rampant as identity theft is today, document shredding can be a first line of defense against any malicious entities that may be waiting for the right moment of carelessness to take advantage of.

What a paper shredding service does for you is far more than just disposing of the spare parchment idling around your place of business. Paper shredding services are an invaluable safeguard for your company credit card information, your sales receipts, your personnel records, your payroll records, and much more.

Preserving good client relations

In addition to protecting the private information that directly concerns your business, paper shredding will also defend your confidential client information. Making the information regarding your clients inaccessible to information vultures will keep your relationships with clients from crumbling due to their trust being lost because of negligence.

Legal liability

It’s not just a good idea to shred your documents, but a legal responsibility that you bear as a business owner. Failing to properly dispose of the documents with private information won’t just be an inconvenience, but also a potential cause for legal penalization that will certainly make conducting business much more difficult than it has to be.

Digital crime through physical negligence

If you need any convincing of just how essential it is to protect your company’s information, just take a look at how prevalent identify theft is today. Did you know that the majority of cyber crime that gets conducted is made possible because the criminals are able to acquire hard copies of confidential information that was carelessly left intact? No amount of digital protection in the world will protect you from an oversight that physically puts your information directly in the hands of those who can use it for their own gain.

Recycling will not protect confidential documents

There are some who believe that recycling their documents is an effective way to kill two birds with one stone, but this belief is misguided. Recycling your private documents is an ineffective way to keep your information from getting stolen, and may actually serve to give criminals even better access to them. The unfortunate truth is that recycling companies really don’t have any kind of federal responsibility to provide any security for the items transferred into their custody.

Things that need to be shredded immediately

Absolutely any kind of document that contains a social security number, employee number, legal information, medical information, personal account number or signature needs to be swiftly and thoroughly shredded before any of the information can be leaked. The following list just contains a few examples of the sorts of things that you need to make sure get shredded in a timely manner:

Birth certificate copies

Credit card bills, histories or reports

ATM receipts

Voided or canceled checks

Any documents that show a customer or employee’s maiden name

Bank statements

Any documents that have residential addresses, e-mail addresses or phone numbers

For more information, Shred-it may be a good place to gather additional resources.